How Western double standards undermine international law

The US and its allies have disproportionately broken international laws with impunity

- DUGAN BROWN YONELA TOSHE-MLAMBO

A MAN uses a mobile phone along the banks of the river Ganges at Kshemeshwar Ghat in Varanasi, India. AFP

(AFP)

INTERNATIONAL law is complex because all the states are sovereign — at least on paper.

The sovereignty of states therefore makes it a challenge to implement international law because certain states are more powerful than others, thus the composition of international institutions arguably benefit certain states disproportionately to other states, although it gets to be sold to the world as the “rules-based order’, an apolitical, egalitarian framework that restrains violence, protects human dignity, and binds every state equally.

The grim reality of international law is that it functions as a rhetorical shield for the most powerful states and a sword against the weaker ones.

The US and its allies, in particular, have disproportionately broken international laws with impunity. The US and its closest allies have breached the UN Charter numerous times.

Their most brazen violations are met with indulgence and reinterpretation even as identical or lesser violations by non-Western states prompt immediate condemnation and calls for sanctions or intervention. Take the US's recent invasion of Venezuela under the second Trump administration.

What began as an ostensibly “counter-narcotics” strategy expanded into a full-blown use of force stretchin, from the Caribbean Sea to Venezuelas capital.